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UPDATE: Unmasked! The Pro-Charter Blogger in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
62

UPDATE: Marc Kenen, the executive director of the Massachusetts Charter School Association and also the author of ballot Question 2, which would expand the number of charter schools in the state, has written to say that this post is untrue. I have no way of knowing who “Nat Morton” is since he or she will not reveal his/her identity. “Nat Morton” is a passionate advocate for charter schools who posted comments here frequently. If Marc Kenen is not “Nat Morton,” I apologize. Someone writes a blog and calls him/herself “Nat Morton,” and I implore that person to give their true name so readers can judge their credentials and their authenticity. I will also ask Marc Kenen to stop writing insulting comments to this blog, as such comments are not permitted.

Knowing this background: I leave the original post intact but warn readers that the identity of “Nat Morton” is unknown, and I can’t be certain who he/she is, other than that it is not me. Beyond that, I can’t know until “Nat Morton” removes his/her mask.

The original post began here:

Reader Christine Langhoff in Massachusetts sent the following comment about a blogger who has frequently written on this blog to defend charter schools, support Question 2 to permit more of them, and to flout his superior research abilities.

“A Boston parent, exchanging emails with (G)Nat Morton, received a digital file from Gnat in support of his arguments. But he forgot to use his nom de plume, and revealed himself as Marc Kenen, executive Director of the MA Charter School Association and also the author of ballot Question 2.

“http://www.masscharterschools.org/about-us/staff

“Kenen has not denied that Nat Morton is his avatar. Further, Stephen B. Ronan is the only person I have ever seen refer to Nat Morton’s blog, and in any forum where the one appears,the other is apt to chime in. This leads me to conclude that Kenen is Gnat is Ronan.

“I find it difficult to enage seriously with someone who would defund our excellent public schools when he is not even willing to own his perspective publicly by using his own name as he advances the cause of the privatizers. And if there’s any question whether the ballot question is designed to defund our schools, it’s worth noting that Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson made this point in the Askwith Forum at Harvard on Sept. 27 regarding Question 2. He asked Kenen directly why he had not written a funding mechanism into the proposal. Start at 1:12:00 (It’s apparent in the video that Kenen bears more than a passing resemblance to his Nat Morton avatar.)

“https://youtu.be/XCsZZ-J7mcU

“https://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/16/09/more-charter-schools-massachusetts-vote-and-national-debate”

So there you have it: the leading advocate of Question 2 (more charters) pretends to be an independent researcher but is in fact a paid employee of the state charter association. Why not give your name and affiliation and let people make their own judgment? This is redolent of the charter movement itself, which pretends to be about helping poor kids but attracts funding from Wall Street, right wing politicians, and others whose real goal is privatization, not helping improve schools for all children.

Our national goal is equal educational opportunity, not a free-market of winners and losers. Privatization does not advance equal educational opportunity. It exacerbates inequality, just like any free market.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Privatization

Daily Kos: Paul Ryan’s Critique of Trump’s Misogyny is Equally Misogynistic

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
18

Reader Ellen Lubic drew my attention to this excellent analysis of Congressman Paul Ryan’s rejection of Donald Trump’s lewd, crude remarks about women.

I must that that when I read his comments online in an instant bulletin from CNN, I found them offensive. I was driving with friends to the airport in Las Vegas on my way home from a National Parks vacation, and I read his remarks out loud. He said, “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”

My reaction? What? I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, championed and revered like a fragile piece of pottery. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else.

But this writer said it much better, because she knows the lengths Paul Ryan and Gus party have gone to take away women’s rights.

Excuse me? Who are you, Paul Ryan? One of King Arthur’s men? A knight of the Round Table declaring fealty to the Code of Chivalry?

Let’s get one thing straight. You are not my knight in shining armor.

I don’t need to be “championed” by you. And I certainly don’t want to be “revered” by you. As to your assertion that women should not be “objectified”? GTFO. The entire modern Republican party does nothing but objectify women. You deny our humanity daily. You have made it your number one mission to reduce us down to our uteri and said you, and you alone, control what happens to our bodies.

You hold entire hearings about women’s issues without inviting a single woman. When you do deign to allow women to speak, you condescend to, brow beat and aggressively attempt to shame them. You have launched a single-minded assault on the ability of poor women in this country to obtain healthcare. Championed our employer’s rights over our own when it comes to our private healthcare decisions. You have legislated that our doctors lie to us and rape us with ultrasound wands. In Texas, you played God by keeping a dead woman artificially “alive” so that she could serve as an incubator. In Indiana, your new hero, Mike Pence, legislated that women had to deliver aborted or miscarried fetal blood and tissue to funeral homes for burial or cremation and crusaded to severely punish women for having miscarriages in the first place.

And what about you, Paul Ryan? How have you personally “championed” women? Was it in 1998 when you said that women should be criminally prosecuted for terminating pregnancies? When you tried to prevent women serving overseas in our military from having abortions in U.S. military hospitals even when they paid for it out of their own pockets? How about when you worked with Todd Akin to narrow the legal definition of rape to “forcible rape”? Or maybe it was in 2009 when you co-sponsored the “Sanctity of Life” Act which declared a fertilized egg a “person” and outlawed abortions, most forms of contraception and in-vitro fertilization? The numerous times you have voted to defund Planned Parenthood? In 2011 when you supported the “Let Women Die Bill” that allowed hospitals to refuse to terminate pregnancies even when the woman’s life was in danger?

Was it when you opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Opposed paid family leave?

When. When have you ever “championed” women, Paul Ryan?

Donald Trump may be a crass misogynist who thinks women exist for his own pleasure but you, Paul Ryan, are just as bad if not worse. You don’t respect us. You seek to be master over us and I, for one, could do without your paternalistic brand of “championing”.

Read this great post and open the links. Hypocrisy through and through.

Categories Fraud, Politics, Trump

Georgia: Governor Deal to African-American Ministers: “Trust Me.”

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
21

Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is pushing a constitutional amendment to allow the state to take over low-scoring public schools. He calls it an “opportunity school district” and points to New Orleans and the Tennessee Achievement School Districts as models. He brought called together a group of African-American ministers and asked for their support.

Here is the response from one of the attendees, who knew that neither New Orleans or the Tennessee ASD had helped the neediest students. Governor Deal couldn’t answer his questions, because the ALEC model legislation doesn’t explain why cessation of democracy helps schools or what to do after privatizing the schools and giving them to corporations.

Here is the report by Rev. Chester Ellis:

Governor’s Ministers Summoning Meeting was a School Takeover Sales Pitch
By Rev. Chester Ellis 912-257-2394
Pastor of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia

Governor Nathan Deal is working hard to sell the voters on what he calls an Opportunity School District. But this is an opportunity that Georgia should not take.

Recently, The Governor made a pitch to twenty-nine African American ministers in the basement of the mansion. No media was present. But I was one of those ministers.

If Amendment One was about education and opportunity for our communities and children, we could at least hold a logical discussion about evidence-based solutions. As a retired educator and community activist, it is very clear to me that his Opportunity School District is not about education or the community. He has no plan or roadmap to improve schools.

Gov. Deal was looking for our support. He stated, “I need your help.” But we left with more questions than we had answers. It truly is a takeover, and one whose extent is clear to very few voters.

I was disappointed. I thought the Governor would be able to lay out his plan in detail to us. But, what I got from the Governor is he’s making it up as he goes. There’s really no plan. At best, it was guesswork.

Bishop Marvin L. Winans, who has a charter school in Detroit, was the first to speak to us. Brother Winans is a minister and an award winning Gospel singer. He does not live in Georgia. Marvin talked about why he had established his school in Detroit and why he thought it was a good idea that the Governor was willing to do something to help failing schools. But we didn’t have a chance to dialog with him, ask questions or shed light on anything here in Georgia for him. He left for a concert, almost as quickly as he appeared!

Afterwards, the Governor followed with a spiel about why he thought he needed to take over the schools and why the Black clergymen needed to be in support of Amendment 1, The Opportunity School District. He then opened the session up for questions.

I asked him, what is the student to teacher ratio per class of all the schools on your list for takeover? He said he did not have the answer to that question.

My rationale for asking that question was that research tells us ideal pupil to teacher ratio should be 18 to 1, and the further schools and classrooms go past that recommended ratio, the more they are setting students up for failure. Districts need resources to address that problem. The A plus Act of 2000 provided such resources. In fact, this Governor has taken more resources from our public schools. The governor added that he needed to do more research on that issue, so I invited him to do that and gave him some websites he could Google.

I also asked the Governor if all of the schools that are having trouble, as defined by him, are predominately African American schools. He replied, not so much, but that when they looked at schools that were failing they looked at schools that were in a cluster. And that the ministers summoned to the meeting were invited more for being in those identified clusters of schools.

One of my colleagues asked the Governor for the specifics of his Opportunity School District plan. Deal replied that he was using different models, and two of the models he mentioned were the Louisiana Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District models. Then the question was raised about both of those state’s backing away from the models because they failed to accomplish their achievement goals. In fact indicators prove that New Orleans is worse off now The Governor replied, “We are going to look at what they did wrong, and correct their mistakes so that ours will be right. You know, we have to do something, we are willing to try this and then if it doesn’t work, we are willing to work on what doesn’t work and straighten it out.” The problem with the Governor’s logic is that he is asking the voters to change the state’s constitution. We can’t back up if the voters do that!

The Governor says OSD is a “plan in the works”. . So I urged the Governor to use Massachusetts as a model rather than one from Tennessee or Louisiana, which have both failed.

According to a recent article in Education Week, scholars at the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation and Philadelphia-based Research in Action organization found that some states are proposing to mimic “opportunity school district” takeover models despite evidence that prototypes of these models have gone awry. The esteemed Education Week reports that imitating these models are not an appropriate prescription for providing support for schools that needs it.

Massachusetts put their plan in place with on the ground, in the classrooms education practitioners. . Legislators met with them and applied the educator’s advice and professional know how. They set out on a course working together and didn’t change the course until they got the results they were striving for. They are now one of the celebrated and better school systems in the country. I asked the Governor, why didn’t his planners and plans look at that type of successful model?

He replied, “It’s because of demographics.” I responded that clearly Massachusetts doesn’t look like Georgia but education isn’t rocket science …..It requires an understanding of what you are working with. I also referenced just one of many of our state’s successful public school model, Woodville Thompkins High School in Savannah. I’m a graduate of that school and I have worked since 2006 with that school and the community. As a result it is an award winning school in many disciplines.

For the last two years, Woodville-Tompkins Technical and Career High School has had a 100 percent Graduation rate. They have also been cited as being one of the top 30 programs worldwide in Robotics. There is a way to turn schools around and it doesn’t require a Constitutional Amendment. I don’t see the need. It takes a little elbow grease and total involvement from parents, community and legislators to sustain evidence based solutions and models that are already working.

I don’t buy the Governor’s program or plans. He’s selling the public on a quick fix. I think the Governor has some friends who see education as a carte blanche card; something they can make money off of. It’s about the money, not about the children. The legislation doesn’t even define what a failing school is. The Governor has spent little or no time educating the public on the thirteen pages that compose all of the little devils in his plan per Senate Bill 133. He is spending lots of time though, selling his plan.

The Governor is a lame duck, yet he’s asking citizens to trust him blindly and give him all the power over their schools, public property, pocketbooks and children by changing the constitution.

I thanked the Governor for inviting me, but I told him before I left that there are too many uncertainties and too many unanswered questions to go before my congregation and say we should support this. I’m not comfortable with the Governor’s answers or his solutions. His Opportunity School District has no facts and no plans to improve schools. This is an opportunity that citizens can’t afford to take. It is all about the money. It’s just that simple.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Georgia, New Orleans

Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
5

Before the second debate tonight, the Journey for Justice asks the candidates to respond to these questions:


NEWS RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Jaribu Lee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(773) 548-7500
October 8, 2016
info@j4jalliance.com

Education activists release statement ahead of second presidential debate: “Will the next president be tone deaf…”
​

CHICAGO – Today, Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) released the following statement ahead of the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday, September 9th. Thousands of African American and Latino parents, students and activists have challenged both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and third-party candidates) to release their K-through-12 public education platforms, as well as identify how, if elected, they will work to end federal education policies that have destabilized communities and hurt students of color:

“As parents, students and residents of communities impacted by corporate education interventions in 24 cities across this nation, we are dismayed by the omission of public education as an issue during this presidential election season. Public education repeatedly polls as a top tier issue, but has been largely ignored by both major and third party candidates,” said Brown.

“Will the next president be tone deaf to the tremors from the ground? As a national network of grassroots community organizations across America, we have seen first-hand a determined resistance to failed, top-down corporate education interventions that cannot be ignored; Title VI civil rights complaints filed in 12 cities, thousands of people in determined protest against school closings, sit-ins and traffic blockades, students occupying the superintendent’s office in Newark, a 34-day hunger strike to save a neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school in Chicago, the rejection of punitive standardized test across the nation and from those who wish to be the leader of the free world; silence.

“The next president must base their advocacy in relationship with people’s lived reality, not corporate relationships. When a mother cries in Detroit because her child’s school is being closed, or students walk-out by the thousands in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia; it matters. The next president must understand that the United States ranks 19th in the world in public education among OECD countries but when you remove poverty we are number 2. The next president must have the courage to stare down inequity in public education with a commitment to hear the voices of the people directly impacted. The next president must understand that we do not have failing schools in America, as a public we have been failed,” he continued.

“We are asking the next president to meet with the Journey for Justice Alliance and adopt our education platform. Include J4J on your education transition team so that public policy can be rooted in our lived experiences, not someone’s opinion of our communities. We were disappointed that the vice-presidential candidates said nothing about public education in their October 4th debate. We want to hear from both candidates on October 9th about their education agenda. Will they be honest about the harm inflicted on our communities by school closings and the unwarranted expansion of charter schools? Will they acknowledge that the “illusion of choice” must be erased by the reality of strong, high quality neighborhood schools within safe walking distance of our homes? We will be watching.”

​###

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) (www.j4jalliance.org) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.

Journey For Justice Alliance
4242 S. Cottage Grove
Chicago, IL 60653
773-548-7500

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Equity, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Inequality, Injustice, Poverty, Privatization, Race

Cathy O’Neil: The Fallacy of VAM as “One of Multiple Measures”

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2016 //
28

Cathy O’Neil has written s new book called “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.” I haven’t read it yet, but I will.

In this article, she explains that VAM is a failure and a fraud. The VAM fanatics in the federal Department of Education and state officials could not admit they were wrong, could not admit that Bill Gates had suckered the nation’s education leaders into buying his goofy data-based evaluation mania, and could not abandon the stupidity they inflicted on the nation’s teachers and schools. So they say now that VAM will be one of many measures. But why include an invalid measure at all?

As she is out on book tour, people ask questions and the most common is that VAM is only one of multiple measures.

She writes:

“Here’s an example of an argument I’ve seen consistently when it comes to the defense of the teacher value-added model (VAM) scores, and sometimes the recidivism risk scores as well. Namely, that the teacher’s VAM scores were “one of many considerations” taken to establish an overall teacher’s score. The use of something that is unfair is less unfair, in other words, if you also use other things which balance it out and are fair.

“If you don’t know what a VAM is, or what my critique about it is, take a look at this post, or read my book. The very short version is that it’s little better than a random number generator.

“The obvious irony of the “one of many” argument is, besides the mathematical one I will make below, that the VAM was supposed to actually have a real effect on teachers assessments, and that effect was meant to be valuable and objective. So any argument about it which basically implies that it’s okay to use it because it has very little power seems odd and self-defeating.

“Sometimes it’s true that a single inconsistent or badly conceived ingredient in an overall score is diluted by the other stronger and fairer assessment constituents. But I’d argue that this is not the case for how teachers’ VAM scores work in their overall teacher evaluations.

“Here’s what I learned by researching and talking to people who build teacher scores. That most of the other things they use – primarily scores derived from categorical evaluations by principals, teachers, and outsider observers – have very little variance. Almost all teachers are considered “acceptable” or “excellent” by those measurements, so they all turn into the same number or numbers when scored. That’s not a lot to work with, if the bottom 60% of teachers have essentially the same score, and you’re trying to locate the worst 2% of teachers.

“The VAM was brought in precisely to introduce variance to the overall mix. You introduce numeric VAM scores so that there’s more “spread” between teachers, so you can rank them and you’ll be sure to get teachers at the bottom.

“But if those VAM scores are actually meaningless, or at least extremely noisy, then what you have is “spread” without accuracy. And it doesn’t help to mix in the other scores.”

This is a book I want to read. Bill Gates should read it too. Send it to him and John King too. Would they read it? Not likely.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Data, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Trump’s Business Ventures: Hype, Spin, Lies

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2016 //
23

The New York Times reviewed Trump’s business ventures over the recent past. Each was announced as the biggest, the best, the greatest, the most.

https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/politics/donald-trump-business-deals.amp.html

Hype, spin, lies. Like his promises to being back jobs lost to automation or to countries where workers make a few dollars a day.

“When Donald J. Trump unveiled his new online travel booking venture, GoTrump.com, he said in a promotional video in 2006 that customers would “love everything I put on this site.” “There’s nobody better,” he added. “There’s nobody even close!”

“A few months later, ground was broken for Trump Tower Tampa, a project he said would “redefine both Tampa’s skyline and the market’s expectations of luxurious condominium living.”

“And when he signed a long-term deal with the fledgling U.S. Pro Golf Tour that summer to become a partner on a new championship series, he proclaimed that “there is no doubt the talent level is among the highest in the world.”

“The travel venture never took off. The tower in Tampa, Fla., was not built. And the golf championships? Mr. Trump withdrew as the tour fell apart.

“Moving past a disastrous period that led to a loss on paper of more than $900 million — possibly freeing him from federal income taxes for years — Mr. Trump became a one-man factory of big ideas, churning out a constant stream of projects and promises. Together they fed the image of Mr. Trump as an American Midas, the foundation of his argument for why he would make a great president.”

”

Categories Fraud, Trump

Tom Ultican: Charter Schools Are a Scourge: Enough!

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2016 //
6

Tom Ultican teaches high school math and physics in California. He has watched the arrival of charter schools in his district with growing alarm.

https://tultican.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/charter-school-scourge-invading-sweetwater/

He knows that their growth is a result of political connections. Nothing they do is innovative. They duplicate existing administrations. They add nothing of value.

He concludes they are a scourge and a failed experiment. Their time has come and gone.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Privatization

Los Angeles: Charter Teachers Protest Big-Spending Principal

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2016 //
15

El Camino Real Charter High School used to be a public school. It was always a good school. But now it’s embroiled in a financial scandal because its principal used the school credit card to charge lavish indulgences, including first class air travel, meals, hotels, and other items connected to his other job as a talent scout for a major basketball team.

The teachers are not happy.

Taxpayers should be picketing too.

http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20160928/el-camino-real-teachers-stage-silent-protest-over-credit-card-spending-controversy

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Cheating, Fraud

Georgia: Jack Hassard on the Money Behind the Vote to Create a Phony Opportunity School District

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2016 //
10

Jack Hassard is a Professor Emeritus of Science Education at Georgia State University. A former high school teacher, he usually blogs about science education. But he has seen through the hoax of the Governor Deal’s constitutional amendment this November. The ballot asks voters whether the state should have the authority to intervene to help failing schools, yes or no. Readers of this blog know that this is a hoax, intended to deceive voters. The real purpose is to creat a special non-contiguous district consisting of the state’s lowest performing schools. They will be removed from their district and handed over to state control. The state will then transfer them to charter chains.

Every so-called opportunity school district has failed. This is a hoax and a fraud. The governor must know this. Since when were conservative politicians concerned about “saving” poor kids? Note that this reform is a substitute for reducing the poverty that blights children’s lives.

This is an ALEC-inspired program to erode local control and expand privatization.

Hassard explains that Governor Deal is taking advantage of the Supreme Court’s horrendous Citizens United decision that removed limits on political contributions. In this post, he describes the twisted trail of big-money that’s behind Governor Deal’s push to privatize public schools, which will create a money pot for entrepreneurs. Deal is pulling the wool over the eyes of the public.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Georgia, Privatization, Testing

Charles Blow: Trump’s Birther Lies Are Unforgivable (and Deplorable)

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2016 //
41

Charles Blow writes a regular column for the New York Times. In this one, he excoriates Donald Trump’s serial lies, which never end.

He is not only a liar, he traffics in conspiracy theories.

His “retraction” of the Obama birther claim came after five years of cultivating a following of rabid Obama-haters.

He did not apologize for alleging that Obama was not born in the United States. Instead, he claimed falsely that Hillary Clinton had started the rumor and he was putting it to rest.

This world-class liar had the chutzpah to expect praise for acknowledging that Obama was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.

The President produced his birth certificate years ago, and Trump said it was a fraud. Newspapers in Hawaii reported his birth, but the Trump forces insisted that the conspiracy to hide Obama’s foreign birth began on the day he was born.

This man is a menace. He can’t tell truth from lies. If he can, then he simply loves lying, and he wants the rest of us to follow him down the rabbit-hole into TrumpWorld where facts are irrelevant and Trump is always right, no matter how much he lies.

Categories Fraud, Obama, Trump
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